Mountains

The Great Canadian Rocky Mountains

www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=14338&article=4129&week=30

From the Hammock:


Lessons


LAST week I joined a group of friends to climb some of the most amazing Rocky Mountains in the world. As a first, I learned some important and priceless lessons that I would like to share with you today.

Many of you reading this would most certainly know much about mountains, is it not amongst the Great Lakes Region of the Great Rift Valley that you were born?

Therefore I run the risk of becoming Mr. ludicrous from those of you that might have climbed the likes of mountain Kilimanjaro and Rwenzori, even those of you whose highest peak might be Rwenzori water and Kilimanjaro beer.


The trek

We trekked a 16 kilometre uphill before we started the real mountain climbing, at this point waterfalls spewed from a mountain lake which was fed by mountain springs. The springs gave us the only luxury water bottles would be too heavy to carry; we hid them in the bush.

Observing the features from the base of the mountain was a lesson in humility; there were spots that seemed as though man would never capture them even with his facebook, twitter and Iphone, a place where even the precious wallet and camera were so much weight.

After a while, The crusts and dust of civilization were blown off faces, bodies were indeed interrogated, tortured and manipulated. A temporary victory of the mind.






As the altitude increased even the mind was having ideas of retreat, an interruption in the speech of somebody speaking to another was so much bother. The words that each person spoke as the angle of the mountain became ever steeper and sharper became fewer.

There was energy only to trek and you spoke only if you had to and if you were interrupted it was indeed offending.

I learned that climbing a mountain is as much a life skill and sport as a university degree or even a marathon. You start that journey as a closely knit group but the more distance the group covers the more isolated each individual becomes; by the time you reach the top you are alone and the satisfaction is also beyond words. I never got to the top of the peak but even from my vantage point I felt good and deeply was ego was bruised.

Breathtaking

A breath matters so much that as you climb you save up whatever energy is on your body. After walking for 12 kilometres in two hours we came across a waterfall rising above with its white colour and thundering myths, it appeared both mystical and majestic like the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. You had to raise your head at a high angle to be able to see where the lake was, above the waterfalls. Normally it is the other way around.

The only way upwards to the lake was by climbing a near 100-foot wall of cliff –the chain bolted into the mountain was the only thing keeping you from falling off the mountain.

At this point, a person getting out of their way to give you directions on where to place your foot and where to hold your hands onto seemed like a gift that only mothers give to their babies as they move from crawling on the ground to taking their first steps.

As we moved upwards to ever-sharper escarpments and ridges, holding a rock with bare hands and taking steps was indeed holding onto dear life. There everybody was holding on their own life’s, I’d hear only the breaths of my friends; words became too heavy.

At these moments each of us was alone and the simple decisions of where to step meant a choice between life and death. One mishap would mean falling off the mountain.

The higher we climbed the more we each separated from the group and went into a beautiful loneliness. First David Reize went with his wife Nikayla and after a while even they separated and took different routes.


Never tell the abilities and inabilities ofa person based on their gender

The adage that you can tell a book from its cover may hold true for books but it is far too misleading to be used while describing human beings and what they can and cannot do.

I learned this the hard way. I had initially been scared out of climbing up the high cliffs but when I saw a lady who I estimated to have the same body weight as mine I motivated myself that if she had made it up there; I too would make it. (PS. Nikayla; it was not you, it was the couple we met before climbing the first chain.)

Later I not only learnt that I was wrong but it was also a disrespectful statement to say a woman. While I was talking about this incident with Nikayla, it turned into a big debate about the status of women and what men think them.

I was even scared that it was becoming a discussion about class and race relations. I had to defend myself that I come from a country run by women.

And I never needed any proof about women and their strengths after all. Is it not Jane Mbabazi that raised my four siblings and me?

Mountains have many faces like humans

I also learned that like a human being, a mountain has many faces to it, when you stand at the bottom, the top, and west or wherever you always see different perspectives of the rocks, the gullies, waterfalls and the vegetation.

And they all tell unique and different tales.